What is a Marketing Plan Outline?

Definition: A marketing plan outline is a structured framework that lays out a company’s strategy for promoting its products and services. This is an extremely important for any business, especially the small businesses that strive to achieve a competitive advantage and increase their sales.

What Does Marketing Plan Outline Mean?

What is the definition of marketing plan outline? Typically, a the plan outline involves the following parts:

Marketing strategy: how the marketing plan is expected to support the business and help to meet the organizational objectives?

Mission statement: what is the business set out to accomplish, and why?

Target customers: who is the business trying to reach with its marketing plan, and how does it plan to do so?

Competitive analysis: which businesses are the direct competitors, and where does the business rank compared to them?

Value proposition: what makes the business unique?

Pricing strategy: how is the business pricing its products or services, and why does it follow the specific pricing policy?

Adverting and promotion budget: how much money is the firm willing to spend on advertising and promotion, and why?

Required course of action: what are the important actions that the firm should follow to achieve the marketing goals?

Statistics: how is the firm performing, and which areas need improvement?

Let’s look at an example.

Example

Adrian is a marketing specialist, and he is hired by Anthony, a small-business owner, to help him expand his business.

Anthony needs to perform a thorough market research so as to know if the customers are ready for the expansion. By researching the market, Anthony can identify its target market in terms of age, gender, lifestyle, and disposable income. The market research will also include statistics, analysis, and facts, which, he with the help of Adrian, will evaluate and translate into potential marketing strategy.

Anthony needs to identify his direct and indirect competitors. It is important to know who is he competing with and how do they rank compared to his business. Adrian will carry out a SWOT analysis with the help of Anthony to identify the firm’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats compared to the competition. Then, Anthony will be able to know if his value proposition is unique, what pricing strategy he should follow and where exactly he wants to take his business and why.

The final step is to determine the required course of action, including the advertising and promotion budget. Adrian will help Anthony identify areas that need improvement in the business and will set a ceiling for the advertising and promotion budget based on all collected information in the previous steps of the plan outline.